Myra yawned. "I thought I was dreaming. It was an explosion or
something, wasn't it?"
Jim's lips set grimly. After ten years of cold war, there was only one
appropriate observation, and he made it. "I guess maybe this is it."
As by common agreement, they got out of bed and pulled on their robes.
They went downstairs and out into the warm summer night. Other people
had come out of their homes also. Shadowy figures moved and collected in
the darkness.
"Sounded right on top of us."
"I was looking out the window. Didn't see no flash."
"Must have been further away than it seemed."
This last was spoken hopefully, and reflected the mood of all the
people. Maybe it wasn't the bomb after all.
Oddly, no one had thought to consult a radio. The thought struck them as
a group and they broke into single and double units again--hurrying back
into the houses. Lights began coming on here and there.
Jim Peters took Myra's hand, unconsciously, as they hurried up the porch
steps. "Hugh would know," Jim said. "I kind of wish Hugh was here."
Myra laughed lightly--a calculated laugh, meant to disguise the gravity
of this terrible thing. "That's not very patriotic, Jim. If that was the
bomb, Hugh will be kept busy making other bombs to send back to them."
"But he'd know. I'll bet he could tell just by the sound of it." Jim
smiled quietly in the darkness--proudly. It wasn't everybody who had a
genius for a brother. A nuclear scientist didn't happen in every family.
Hugh was somebody to be proud of.
They turned on the radio and sat huddled in front of it. The tubes
warmed with maddening slowness. Then there came the deliberately
impersonal voice of the announcer:
"--on the strength of reports now in, it appears the enemy bungled
badly. Instead of crippling the nation, they succeeded only in alerting
it. The bombs--at this time there appear to have been five of them
dropped--formed a straight north-south line across western United
States. One detonated close to the Idaho-Utah line. The other four were
placed at almost equi-distant points to the south--the fifth bomb,
according to first reports, exploding in a Mexican desert. We have been
informed that Calas, Utah, a town of nine hundred persons, has been
completely annihilated. For further reports, keep tuned to this
station."
[Illustration: _The fifth "one" exploded in the Mexican desert._]
A dance band cut in. Jim got up from his chair. "They certainly did
bungle," he said. "Imagine wasting four atom bombs like that."